I’ll add to what other people are saying with a caveat.
Detonating a Nuke at ground level significantly reduces it’s effectiveness and range. It’s still going to be bad, but it won’t be city levelling bad. A couple of miles at best for the worst explosion/fire damage, even if it’s stronger than Fat Man.
There’s a reason why the two bombs dropped on Japan were detonated at 500-600 meters(1600-1900 feet) above the ground.
Doesn’t the ground just absorb about half of the energy? (And become nasty fallout)
Fat Man was tiny by later standards. The B41, which was actually deployed, was three orders of magnitude more powerful. Sizes have come down again since delivery got really accurate, but the workhorse B61 can be dialed to somewhere from 10 to 20 times Fat Man’s yield.
I’ll add to what other people are saying with a caveat.
Detonating a Nuke at ground level significantly reduces it’s effectiveness and range. It’s still going to be bad, but it won’t be city levelling bad. A couple of miles at best for the worst explosion/fire damage, even if it’s stronger than Fat Man.
There’s a reason why the two bombs dropped on Japan were detonated at 500-600 meters(1600-1900 feet) above the ground.
Doesn’t the ground just absorb about half of the energy? (And become nasty fallout)
Fat Man was tiny by later standards. The B41, which was actually deployed, was three orders of magnitude more powerful. Sizes have come down again since delivery got really accurate, but the workhorse B61 can be dialed to somewhere from 10 to 20 times Fat Man’s yield.
It absorbs a lot, and it channels a lot of the blast up.
Yes, but also its not easy to smuggle a large bomb either.